About El Intransigente

El Intransigente

El Intransigente is an Argentine news name with two lives. It was founded as a printed daily newspaper in the province of Salta, in north-western Argentina, and published in print between 1920 and 1981, becoming known for an adamant criticism of abuses of power and for its defence of press freedom. Twenty-seven years after the printed paper closed, the name returned as an online newspaper: the digital edition was launched on 1 August 2008 and has published continuously since then, offering live news from Argentina and the world under the slogan informacion en estado puro - news, raw as it is. The modern El Intransigente is an online-only operation with its own newsroom, listed in national directories of Argentine digital news portals, and it produces consistent general-news output - national politics, economy, sport and entertainment - for a nationwide audience.

The Salta newspaper, 1920-1981

The original El Intransigente began publication on 17 April 1920 in Salta, under David Michel Torino, its co-founder and owner. In its first years the paper supported the national government of Hipolito Yrigoyen, the Radical president, but it developed into something more independent and more combative: in the words of its historical summaries, it became a faithful interpreter of popular aspiration and of regional reality, the voice of a province distant from Buenos Aires in a country whose press was, and remains, heavily concentrated in the capital. Its very name - The Intransigent - announced a refusal to compromise, and the paper lived up to it.

Its position of adamant criticism of abuses of power, particularly during the 1930s, brought attacks and repeated penalties on the newspaper. Academic research on the Salta press has examined El Intransigente alongside its great provincial rival El Tribuno, comparing their editorials and political columns in the tense year of 1975, on the eve of the 1976 military coup, as part of a wider study of the role of the Salta press in the time of repression and censorship between 1975 and 1983. The pairing captures the paper's historic position: one of the two poles of public argument in its province through most of the twentieth century.

Closure in 1981

The newspaper's passionate fight for freedom of the press and freedom of expression ended in June 1981, when El Intransigente ceased publication during Argentina's last military dictatorship. Historical accounts attribute the definitive closure to differences in the direction and management of the newspaper, especially after the deaths of its directors Martin and David Michel Torino, and to the institutional instability of the country, which contributed strongly to the end. The paper thus closed in the darkest period of modern Argentine history, two years before the restoration of democracy, and for twenty-seven years the name survived only in memory, in archives and in the historiography of the provincial press.

Return as an online newspaper

On 1 August 2008, El Intransigente returned - not in print, and not as the digital edition of a surviving paper, but as a new online newspaper that revived the historic name as a digital-native operation. Reference accounts of the revival note that twenty-seven years after its closure, El Intransigente became again a reference in online press, and that since the online launch the newspaper has not stopped increasing its number of visits. The revived title's editor-in-chief is listed as Ana Vallejo. Directories of the current outlet place its base in Salta, honouring the paper's provincial origin, while reference summaries of the online edition give its headquarters as Buenos Aires; what is not in dispute is the national scope of the modern operation, whose newsroom covers Argentine and world news live and continuously for readers across the country.

The revival belongs to a recognisable Argentine pattern, in which historic newspaper names - carrying recognition and a usable past - are reborn as digital brands. But El Intransigente's case is unusually stark: no continuous company survived from 1981 to 2008, so the online paper is a resurrection rather than a migration, and its claim on the name rests on the memory of the Salta daily and on the editorial identity summed up in its slogan.

Editorial identity

The online newspaper states its identity in its slogan, informacion en estado puro - information in its pure state, news raw as it is. The phrase does double work: it promises speed and directness, the unprocessed news feed of a digital-native outlet, and it echoes the historic paper's self-image as an uncompromising teller of unwelcome truths. The editorial directives that govern the modern title, as summarised in reference accounts, are formulated in that slogan, which characterises the institution. In practice, the modern El Intransigente is a generalist popular newspaper online: it leads with national politics and government, covers the economy and public life, and gives extensive space to sport, entertainment and the human stories that drive digital traffic - a different mixture from the austere political daily of Salta, adapted to the economics of the online audience.

Sections and coverage

The online edition's sections, as recorded in reference listings, map a full general-news offer: Argentina, for national news; Regional, for the provinces; Mundo, for world news; Sociales; Salud, health; Mujer, women's coverage; Espectaculo, entertainment; Deportes, sport; Cultura, culture; Editoriales, editorials; Policiales, police news; Obituarios, obituaries; and Turismo, travel. Political coverage - the presidency, Congress, the courts, the provinces and the parties - is the backbone, and the paper's Salta inheritance shows in a regional section that treats provincial Argentina as news in itself rather than as an afterthought to the capital. Sport and entertainment supply the volume that sustains a generalist digital operation, and the obituaries and society pages preserve, in digital form, functions that provincial printed papers performed for their communities for a century.

The historic paper in scholarship

The printed El Intransigente continues to be studied as a document of Argentine provincial life. The comparative study of its editorials with those of El Tribuno in 1975, published in the Revista Escuela de Historia, analysed the papers' discourse strategies, themes and silences on political violence and freedom of expression in the year before the dictatorship - evidence that, for historians, the Salta daily is a primary source for understanding how provincial Argentina argued about power in the twentieth century. Its closure in 1981, its harassment in the 1930s and its founding support for, and subsequent independence from, the Yrigoyen government make it a compact case study of the provincial press under pressure.

Two lives, one name

Few Argentine outlets join past and present as sharply as El Intransigente. The first life, 1920 to 1981, was that of a provincial printed daily that criticised the powerful, was punished for it, and died with the dictatorship's Argentina. The second, from 2008, is that of a national digital newspaper trading on speed, volume and a famous name. Directory listings treat the modern site as what it is - an online-only operation with its own newsroom and a consistent general-news output - while reference works treat the name as what it also is: a single title with a founding date of 1920, a closure in 1981 and an online rebirth. Both descriptions are true, and together they explain the outlet's unusual position in Argentine media.

Continuing publication

El Intransigente continues to publish online, updating continuously with Argentine and world news across its full range of sections. More than a century after a Salta printing house first issued a newspaper that refused, on principle, to compromise, the name still appears on Argentine screens every day - transformed in form, geography and economics, but still presenting itself, in its own slogan, as news in its purest state.